The Amazon Labor Union Campaign to End the Industrial Warfare Dispatch: A Personal History of Heather Goodall, who lost her campaign to boycott Amazon, and her husband’s suicide

But while some Amazon warehouse workers have been making it very obvious why people don’t necessarily want to stay in those roles, Engadget notes that managers are also leaving thanks to issues with “development and promotions,” or otherwise advancing their careers at Amazon. According to the report, some of this may be due to the training programs that the company provides that are important for moving up at Amazon but seem run in a disorganized and wasteful manner. Amazon didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment on Engadget’s report.

The Amazon Labor Union lost its campaign today at a facility in Schodack, New York. Workers voted 406 to 206 against joining the union, the second loss out of ALU’s three unionization campaigns at Amazon warehouses.

The personal history of Heather Goodall is what inspired the campaign to be defeated today. She took a job picking and packing items for shipment at ALB1 in February in an attempt to find out if the news she’d read about Amazon’s tough working environment was true. She became more interested in workplace conditions after one of her sons took his own life and she believes it was related to a poor working environment at GlobalFoundries. GlobalFoundries said that it has a priority on employee health and safety.

An employer-regularized workplace law requiring employers to meet their quota between Black Friday and Christmas day in Shakopee, Minnesota

Tyler Hamilton has been working on his performance. He pulls himself out of bed at least five nights a week between Black Friday and Christmas to wash his teeth, and then goes to work in the evening. On his drive to the Amazon fulfillment center in Shakopee, Minnesota, he stops at Wendy’s to buy two bourbon bacon burgers, two large chilis, fries, and a drink.

Hamilton eats the burgers while driving and punches in to start his shift at 5 pm. In the middle of the night, he takes thirty minutes of unpaid break time and reheats the chilis. By the time he clocks out at 5:30 am, his car has frozen, so Hamilton sits huddled in the dark until it warms enough that he can drive home.

“Then I have to shower, because working at Amazon for 12 and a half hours means you’re going to be filthy,” he says. I may pass out, but I will have some juice, and maybe look at a bit of the internet. He will do it all again the next evening.

As holiday shopping reaches a climax this week, Amazon’s two-day Prime shipping remains one of the few options left for desperate shoppers still hoping to order online. It’s a notoriously exhausting and demanding time for workers at the company, where the period between Black Friday and Christmas day is known as “peak season.”

Amazon spokesperson Steve Kelly denies that the company increases its productivity expectations for workers, and says they are set carefully. “We assess performance based on safe and achievable expectations that take into account time and tenure, peer performance, and adherence to safe work practices,” he says.

The four workers interviewed for this piece also say that their managers speak less about safety and instead emphasize speed during this period. All have been involved in organizing fellow employees to try and improve working conditions, but none work at a facility where a unionization petition has been filed.

A similar law that was passed in California last September requires employers to provide written descriptions of their quota and forbids employers from punishing workers for failing to meet it if they didn’t know about it.

The authors of the law say that it was intended to address the management practices of Amazon and its employees, which have often been criticized for dehumanizing the warehouse workers who work there.

Further evidence of the stress placed on Amazon warehouse employees can be found in a 2021 report by the advocacy group Strategic Organizing Center, which found that Amazon workers are twice as likely to be injured than people that work for warehouses within similar companies.